Albertus Magnus
| Albertus Magnus |  | AlbertusMagnus.jpg |
|
| Albert the Great |
| Born | between 1193 and 1206 |
| Died | 1280 |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Beatified | 1622 |
| Canonized | 1931 |
| Feast | November 15 |
| Patronage | Cincinnati Ohio; medical technicians; natural sciences; philosophers; scientists; students; World Youth Day |
A short hymn or prayer
Dear Scientist and Doctor of the Church, natural science always led you to the higher science of God. Though you had an encyclopedic knowledge, it never made you proud, for you regarded it as a gift of God. Inspire scientists to use their gifts well in studying the wonders of creation, thus bettering the lot of the human race and rendering greater glory to God. Amen.
prayer |
Albertus Magnus (between
1193 and
1206 –
November 15,
1280), also known as
Saint Albert the Great and
Albert of Cologne, was a
Dominican friar who became famous for his comprehensive knowledge and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He is considered to be the greatest German philosopher and theologian of the
Middle Ages. He was the first medieval scholar to apply
Aristotle's philosophy to Christian thought at the time.
Catholicism honors him as a
Doctor of the Church, one of only 33 men and women with that honor.
He was born of the noble family of Bollstadt in
Lauingen,
Bavaria,
Germany on the
Danube, sometime between 1193 and
1206. The term "magnus" is not descriptive; it is the
Latin equivalent of his family name, de Groot.
Albertus was educated principally at
Padua, where he received instruction in
Aristotle's writings. After an alleged encounter with the
Blessed Virgin Mary, he entered holy orders. In
1223 (or
1221) he became a member of the
Dominican Order, and studied
theology under its rules at
Bologna and elsewhere. Selected to fill the position of lecturer at
Cologne, where the order had a house, he taught for several years there, at
Regensburg,
Freiburg,
Strasbourg and
Hildesheim. In
1245 he went to
Paris, received his doctorate and taught for some time, in accordance with the regulations, with great success.
In
1254 he was made provincial of the Dominican Order, and fulfilled the arduous duties of the office with great care and efficiency. During the time he held this office he publicly defended the Dominicans against the attacks by the secular and regular faculty of the
University of Paris, commented on
St John, and answered the errors of the
Arabian philosopher,
Averroes.
In
1260 Pope Alexander IV made him
bishop of
Regensburg, which office he resigned after three years. The remainder of his life he spent partly in preaching throughout Bavaria and the adjoining districts, partly in retirement in the various houses of his order. In
1270 he preached the
eighth Crusade in
Austria. Among the last of his labours was the defence of the orthodoxy of his former pupil,
Thomas Aquinas, whose death in
1274 grieved Albertus. After suffering collapse of health in
1278, he died on
November 15,
1280, in
Cologne,
Germany. His tomb is in the
crypt of the Dominican church of
St. Andreas in Cologne.
Albertus is frequently mentioned by
Dante, who made his doctrine of
free will the basis of his ethical system. In his
Divine Comedy, Dante places Albertus with his pupil Thomas Aquinas among the great lovers of wisdom (
Spiriti Sapienti) in the Heaven of the Sun.
Albertus was beatified in
1622. He was canonized and also officially named a Doctor of the Church in
1931 by
Pope Pius XI. His feast day is celebrated on November 15th.
Two editions of Albertus's "complete works" have been published. The first was edited by Fr. Peter Jammy at Lyons in 1651, in twenty-one folio volumes. The second was published under the direction of Abbé Auguste Borgnet in Paris, in 1890-99. This second edition had thirty-eight quarto volumes. A critical edition published by the Albertus-Magnus-Institut of Cologne began appearing in 1951, but it is far from finished and when done will number over 41 volumes. Early printed versions of his work (and those ascribed to him) abound.
Albertus's writings displayed his prolific habits and literally encyclopedic knowledge of topics including, but not limited to, logic, theology, botany, geography, astronomy, mineralogy, chemistry, zoölogy, physiology, and
phrenology, all of it the result of logic and observation. He was the most widely read author of his time. The whole of
Aristotle's works, presented in the Latin translations and notes of the Arabian commentators, were by him digested, interpreted and systematized in accordance with church doctrine. He came to be so associated with Aristotle that he was referred to as "Aristotle's ape".
Albert's activity, however, was more philosophical than theological (see
Scholasticism). The philosophical works, occupying the first six and the last of the twenty-one volumes, are generally divided according to the Aristotelian scheme of the sciences, and consist of interpretations and condensations of Aristotle's relative works, with supplementary discussions depending on the questions then agitated, and occasionally divergences from the opinions of the master.
His principal theological works are a commentary in three volumes on the Books of the Sentences of
Peter Lombard (
Magister Sententiarum), and the
Summa Theologiae in two volumes. This last is in substance a repetition of the first in a more didactic form.
Albertus's knowledge of physical science was considerable and for the age accurate. His industry in every department was great, and though we find in his system many of those gaps which are characteristic of scholastic philosophy, the protracted study of Aristotle gave him a great power of systematic thought and exposition, and the results of that study, as left to us, by no means warrant the contemptuous title sometimes given him of the "Ape of Aristotle." They rather lead us to appreciate the motives which caused his contemporaries to bestow on him the honourable surnames "The Great" and
Doctor Universalis. It must, however, be admitted that much of his knowledge was ill digested; it even appears that he regarded
Plato and
Speusippus as
Stoics.
Albertus was both a student and a teacher of
alchemy and
chemistry. He isolated
arsenic in
1250, the first element to be isolated since antiquity and the first with a known discoverer. He was alleged to be a magician, since he was repeatedly charged by some of his unfriendly contemporaries with communing with the devil, practicing the craft of magic, and with the making of a demonic automata able to speak. He was also one of the alchemists reputed to have succeeded in discovering the
Philosopher's Stone.
|
Albertus Magnus monument in Cologne |
In music history, Albertus is known for his enlightening commentary on musical practice of the time. Most of his musical observations are given in his commentary on Aristotle's
Poetics. Among other things, he rejects the idea of "
music of the spheres" as ridiculous: movement of astronomical bodies, he supposes, is incapable of generating sound. He also wrote extensively on proportions in music, and on the three different subjective levels on which
plainchant could work on the human soul: purging of the impure; illumination leading to contemplation; and nourishing perfection through contemplation. Of particular interest to
20th century music theorists is the attention he paid to silence as an integral part of music.
*Magnus is recorded as having made an
android, a mechanical
automaton in the figure of a man.
Natural science does not consist in ratifying what others have said, but in seeking the causes of phenomena.*
History of science in the Middle Ages#
Androides.
*
Entry in
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*
Catholic Encyclopedia article*
